by Lumen Reese
The whole train had stopped by then and was heading the other way, back toward the village.
The man that I had shot in the back was alive and moaning as we moved him. Henry and Hatley stayed with them. I went car by car, and at the end I went out onto the platform, where Corso was leaning forward on the railing. The train was moving slowly, so the wind was not biting, but the air was cold enough. I wrapped my arms tight around me and he glanced ove r .
“Good work, Honey.”
“I shot someone, he could die.”
“That’s the job.”
“Except I wasn’t thinking about protecting anyone else. I shot him because he shot you. I didn’t know I could be that violent.”
“You never know until it happens,” he said. “And you won’t know for a while that you’re still the same person, but you are.”
My stomach was still heavy. I had hoped he would say something that would make that heaviness go away, but I guessed, like most things, I would have to figure it out on my own. I went back inside, and he followed .
Chapter Twenty-Nine
We stopped at the station in the Hollow to pick up Clark, Kayla and Mr. Nathanson. Hugs were exchanged, then Clark and Kayla went and found empty seats to sleep on. There could be no sleep for the rest of us, though. It was hours before we reached New York. Before dawn. An entire fleet of black company cars was waiting to ferry everyone to the hospital, and news vans were waiting in the lot, too. Cameras crowded the police line and reporters shouted questions as we ducked into backseats.
At the hospital, nurses put Corso on a gurney and took him away. As he was disappearing around a corner he called back, “Check on Alex!”
Hatley had left from the station to go and pick up her son. It would take time for Four Quarters to reopen, and so she promised she would see us again, before they did. Jericho had gone off with the hospital’s director, but he had set up hotel rooms for Henry and Clark somewhere on the way in.
“See you soon?” Clark said.
“See you soon. Tomorrow, probably.”
“Thank you.” He hugged me, stepped back and waited for Henry.
“Tomorrow?” I asked.
“Okay.”
“I’ll call you,” I said.
So I went and found Alex, and Joey was there outside her room with another cop I knew, Pam Carnegie, a black woman in her forties.
He jumped up and pulled me into a hug, careful not to spill his coffee. “There she is.”
“Great work, Stella,” Pam said. She offered me a second cup she was holding. “Have some coffee, you look like you need it.”
“Thanks.” I never liked the stuff, but I took a sip and found it less harsh than I remembered.
“Where’s Corso?”
“I think they were taking him for x-rays or something,” I said. “Then probably surgery, he still had a bullet in him.”
“Jericho mentioned it,” Joey said. “I told him his luck was running out, didn’t I? Should have been more careful.”
“I should have been,” I said.
“Oh. Don’t worry about it. They’ll take good care of him. He’ll be fine. Why don’t you give me that and head home and get some sleep?”
But I took another drink. “No. I’ll stick around.”
“You want to wait for Corso?”
“At least until he’s out of surgery. Alex alright?”
“Yeah, we told her you guys got the rest out. She wanted to talk to you, she’s probably not awake yet, though.”
“Is their mother here?”
“Worked a third, wanted a shower. Back around nine.”
“Okay.”
Even drinking the coffee, I ended up dozing off slumped in my chair.
I slept until the door opened next to us and Alex stuck her head out. “Good morning.”
We all said, “Good morning.”
“How’s my brother?”
Joey said, “Out of surgery, sleeping it off. Gonna be fine.”
“Stella, can we talk?”
I rubbed my eyes. “Sure.”
My heart began to hammer, but I stepped in after her and shut the door. Her blonde friend was sleeping in the bed on the right. Alex went and sat on the other bed, I took a seat by the wall.
“Are you alright?” she said.
I blinked. “I’m fine. How about you?”
She brought a hand up and rubbed her split lip. She didn’t seem to realize she was doing it. “I don’t know how to go back to normal.”
“I know what you mean. It will though.” I was starting to get an inkling of that, not from the new things, but from the old. If that were true then it was true for the new things, too, and I wouldn’t let it take ten years. I opened my mouth again and found myself saying, “I was raped when I was sixteen.”
Her face blank, she nodded.
I added, “Don’t shut down like I did, you’ll be normal again, or a new normal, a lot sooner than I was.”
“Thank you.”
She stood up and hugged me, I flinched but I pushed through my discomfort and hugged her back.
“Why are you still here, anyway?” she asked when we broke apart.
“Oh. I wanted to wait until your brother got out of surgery, but I fell asleep.”
“Mm-hm.” She smiled. “Well I won’t keep you, then.”
“Okay,” I said. “Take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
Joey said, as soon as I stepped out, “Corso’s just down the hall, 208.”
I looked the way he had gestured.
“We could go together?” he volunteered.
“Alright. Come on.”
We went down the hall and turned a corner, into another hall that was wrapped in windows, and showed, down a floor, a courtyard of stone with several trees contained in glass. The sun had risen in the hours since we had entered the hospital in the time that was no longer night but not yet twilight.
I said suddenly, “I got to touch trees, in there.”
“Really? Neat. Not coming down on us, are you?”
“No, it wasn’t that euphoric in there. I don’t know. It’s weird being out.”
He shrugged. “You haven’t been home yet. You fall onto that couch, with the mystery-stains and butt grooves w o rn in it, you’ll be right as rain. Stacey will probably clear the kids out for you, so you can get some sleep. -Hey! You’ve got an in with Jericho, now, you think he can put them on a list or something, to get them in the rec center more often?”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“I saw him going around to different rooms, with a suit, earlier. Do you think they’d try to shut it all up, like Corso said?”
“I don’t know.”
We were passing rooms, 204, 206, 208, in an otherwise quiet hall. A round desk made up a nurse’s station after a few more rooms, where a woman was doing paperwork. The blinds were open, giving me a view into his room, which had blue walls and Corso was laying back in a white bed, with his left arm in a sling. When he noticed the two of us, he sat up straighter and waved for us to come in. Joey opened the door wide and held it for me, and called, “There he is!”
“Hey, big man!” Corso extended a hand, they squeezed each other as Joey pulled up a chair by Corso’s beside table.
“You look like a monk.”
“A monk?”
“Holy.”
“Uh. Check this out.” He picked something small off of the table, and lobbed it up in the air for Joey to catch. “The bullet that shot me.”
“This little thing?”
“That’s the culprit.”
“I think you’re getting soft, you would’ve just walked it off a few years ago.”
“I’d love to walk out of here, right now, you have no idea. I haven’t seen my bed in weeks.”
I spoke finally, “I have some idea.”
“Mm-hm. My bed is the best in Brooklyn, though,” he said. “You should try it sometime.”
“Okay, time for me t
o go home. ” I exchanged a glance with Joey. I hadn’t told Corso that his apartment had been firebombed. “ Alex is fine, you’re fine, I’m tired.”
I turned to go and Joey called, “I’ll be home after a while.”
There were cars outside the hospital and one of the drivers who was smoking a cigarette opened the back door of his car for me, but I waved him off with a, “No thank you.”
And I started for the subway, which got me to Brooklyn. It was an off hour and so the place was not too crowded. A few seats were open but I stood, not wanting to be wedged between my fellow New Yorkers. From the subway stop nearest Joey’s apartment, it was a long walk. And my legs, feet and back ached, but I walked it, feeling realer every minute that I was surrounded by skyscrapers.
Finally I was on familiar blocks, then turning onto our street, then the stone steps were in view, one of Joey’s neighbors was sitting on them and I had to go past him up into the lobby. I climbed the stairs. As soon as I had opened the door, Stacey was rushing across the living room and throwing her arms around me.
“Stella! I’m so glad you’re okay, welcome home!”
The kids came running from their room, the girls each hugged me and Stacey’s nephew stood by with a nervous smile.
Stacey whipped an envelope out of her back pocket. Her voice was unusually high. “Someone brought this for you this morning, it’s from Four Quarters. I looked, I’m sorry-.”
“-How much?” I took the envelope but didn’t open it, just watched her eyes.
“A hundred thousand dollars,” she gasped, and her hand went to her chest, her eyes pooled, and then she was hugging me again. “And there’s one here for Corso, too.”
“How-?”
“-The same.”
My mouth hung open and my heart was pounding.
Josie asked, “Why are you crying?”
Her mom sort of laughed, and I answered, “Because you’re going to college.”
But she said, “I don’t want to go to college.”
“Trade school, then.”
“Okay.”
Once she had let me go, she took the kids to the library, and I flopped down on the couch and tucked my head down into the space between the cushions and the back, and slept until night, woke and the rest of the house was asleep, so I went out and walked in the vast, holy New York night for a couple of hours, then went in and slept some more in my home.
*
I woke before the rest, and made pancakes. Josie and Dean came out first, and climbed up into the kitchen chairs, a bit too high for them. I sat across and ate, too, all of us completely silent but comfortable. Stacey was next, then Anna, then finally Joey. I kept at the stove and fed them as they woke.
After breakfast I called Henry and Clark at their hotel, and invited them both over for lunch.
Joey had a day off. We all went grocery shopping for something special for lunch, and let the kids get whatever caught their eyes. We bought fresh fruit for the first time in at least six months.
Stacey and Joey were cooking by the time Henry and Clark showed up, and I was just chopping things because that was the beginning and end of my involvement with any of Joey’s recipes.
We nodded to each other, and no one knew what to say for a moment.
“Smells good.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s going to be Carne Adobada,” I said.
“Need help?”
“No.”
Stacey, looking back at them for the first time, proclaimed, “He’s so tall!”
It broke the awkwardness suddenly, and we were all smiling and I guided them to the kitchen table where Stacey took a seat and said, “Nice to meet you both. What is it like, living in there?”
*
Joey told me the next day that Corso was leaving the hospital, against doctor’s recommendations. Alex was going, too, and they would both be staying with their mother for a while. I thought that was probably a good thing.
There was an apartment available, right across the street from Joey’s place. It was small, a studio, but it was good enough for me and I could move in after about a week.
We had all been keeping an eye on the news, and though the media gave way to rampant speculation about what had happened in Four Quarters, there was no confirmation. Then, on the third day that we had been back, Jericho held a press conference, with Isaac and Kayla both behind him, and Frank Halderez and the sitting governor, too. He explained the entire thing, and he said all of our names, on a worldwide news feed. At the end, Jericho announced that he was withdrawing his candidacy for governor.
In the many reports that followed, different stations cracking open new details about the human trafficking ring and the investigations every day, my picture was shown dozens of times. Victims gave interviews, which soon became repetitive but I could never shut off. I spent too much time in front of the television, during the day, I knew. And at night I had stopped sleeping much, going out and walking. On the fifth day, Alex reported as a junior anchor for News One. Seeing her, I felt a twinge of fear for what I had confessed to her in the hospital, but the words I dreaded never left her lips. She was remarkably composed as she talked about the ordeal, and broke her poker face only when she talked about her brother, where she would get a tiny grin on her face that made her the spitting image of him.
I saw Henry again on the sixth day. He showed up at Joey’s, when the place was empty except for me, and stood around nervously. Noticing the television on, he stood and watched for a minute.
“Terrible, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“Anyways, get your shoes on.”
He took me to Staten Island , to a brick building climbing with ivy and a neat hedge inside a metal fence that wrapped around the courtyard.
We didn’t talk much on the subway right out, just, “Sleeping much?”
“No,” I had said.
“Me neither. Maybe we should see a shrink.”
We both smiled at that.
The place was an institution, full of elderly people. Henry Haskell, Sr. was one of the youngest among the residents, still brown-haired, minimal wrinkles, tall and broad. We found him playing chess with a white-haired woman, and I felt like I was getting a glimpse at what Henry would be when he was older.
Henry Sr. stood when he saw us, and his eyes sparkled just like Henry’s could as he hugged his son. Then he shook my hand, and we sat down at a table by the window.
“I’ve been seeing you on the news! Tell me everything!”
*
The next night Hatley asked me over to her hotel’s bar for a drink. I wouldn’t have ordered one, but she had one waiting at the seat beside her when I went in. The place was dimly lit, mostly empty, and a glowing green water fixture tumbled down the far wall, under glass, casting its hue on the rest of the room.
Hatley’s legs were crossed on her high stool, exposed in a cocktail dress, shapely and smooth.
“Hel-lo, Darling,” she said as I sat and swiveled around to face her.
“Hi,” I breathed, realizing I was a bit tense. I exhaled.
“Calm down,” she said. “All friends, here, no reporters. Have you gotten reporters, yet?”
“A couple of times,” I said.
“Not easy going outside, is it?”
“Not during the day.”
I touched the stem of the martini glass in front of me.
“Try it,” she said. “You’ll like it. Vodka-soda-cherry.”
I brought it to my lips and tried a sip. The alcohol was subtle but not gone, and it was sweet but not too sweet. Two cherries rolled around the basin of the glass, stabbed on a plastic sword.
“It’s good,” I admitted.
“A little bit will calm you right down, just don’t get used to using it that way.”
“Right.”
“Are you sleeping?”
“Sometimes. I’m moving into a new place of my own in a few days, I think that will help.”
“Y
ou might find it’s the other way. Patter of little feet is so comforting.”
“Mm-hm. How is your son doing?”
“He’s fine. I have a tutor coming in so he doesn’t fall behind on his school work. It hasn’t been easy explaining everything, though.”
“You told him? We keep the kids away from the news.”
“So what do you tell them?”
“I think their mom told them that I went in to find Corso, who was in there tracking some more criminals, and so I ended up helping him. Then Joey told them that the people Corso was looking for had kidnapped his sister and a bunch of other people. They’re six and ten, so they know people get snatched sometimes, they just might not know why.”
“You’ve seen Henry and Clark?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Did Henry take you to meet his father?”
“Yes…”
“I thought he might. He took me, when we were younger. Jericho goes to see him, sometimes, too, with or without Henry. He’s a nice man.”
“He was nice,” I agreed.
We were silent for a moment, she took a drink and so did I. “I wanted to make sure that you were okay,” she said. “So did Jerry, in fact, but he’s busy and he thinks you might not want him around.”
“Why would he think that?” I asked.
“Well he’s a control freak, he wishes he had been a better judge of character. I’m sure you’re glad for how it turned out, for your family’s sake, but Jericho can’t stand how everything went tits-up the way it did.”
“He paid me double what he promised.”
She smiled. “He should have paid you triple.”
We toasted that, and drank some more.
She traced a finger along the rim of her empty glass. “My real name is Evelyn. I really do prefer Hatley, these days, I just thought you should know. It’s weird if people don’t know.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s strange, that people can adapt to changes that big.”
“People adapt to new roles every day… They’re thinking of offering you a job,” she said. “Lead investigator within the Four Quarters of Imagination. They could give you real training. They could bring you in when they needed you, pay you well. It would be a lot of bounty hunting, chasing story-jumpers, but maybe they would have you nailing the drug connections, too. You could make the place better. And, of course, it would help improve the public image, to keep you around.”